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In this episode of Startup GPG Podcast, Daniel Scharff is joined by Erin Fasano, the chief marketing officer at Core Foods with over two decades of experience in the CPG industry, and delves into the intricacies of marketing for food and beverage brands, while trying to explain the question “what is a CMO?” With a focus on emerging brands, Erin emphasizes the pivotal role of a CMO and advises aspiring marketers to start at classic CPG companies before venturing into smaller enterprises.
Discover the keys to success, including building strong relationships with retailers like Whole Foods and Target, crafting comprehensive marketing plans aligned with sales activities, and prioritizing owned platforms for long-term brand identity. Plus, gain insights on effective consumer feedback utilization, brand partnerships, navigating the competitive landscape, and understand why retail distribution often trumps direct-to-consumer channels for heavy and perishable products and unravel the strategies for success in competitive categories.
Ready to turn heads in the market? Hit play now!
What Erin talks about:
- Joining Core Foods and Transition to CMO Role
- Starting of Erin’s Own Brand - Starryside
- Challenges and Lessons
- Marketing Strategy and Planning
- Retail and Shopper Marketing
- Aligning DTC with Trade Programming
- Social Media and Authenticity
- Consumer Input and Product Development
- Consumer Input on Pricing
- Approach to D2C vs. Retail
- Consulting and Collaboration
Episode Links:
Core Food’s Website
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
- Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
- Join the Startup CPG Slack community (15K+ members and growing!)
- Follow @startupcpg
- Visit host Daniel's Linkedin
- Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
Episode music by Super Fantastics
Creators & Guests
What is The Startup CPG Podcast?
A podcast from Startup CPG - highlighting stories from founders working towards a better food system and industry insights from experts to give you a better chance at success.
00:09
Erin Fasano
Marketing is a little bit of an art and I think sometimes with the focus, with the amount of data you can extract like the roas and the keck and how efficient can we get and how much can we extract for the one penny we want to spend and how many dollars can we get? I think sometimes we lose a little bit of the forest through trees and I love to just try to remind people sometimes doing branding really does help.
00:33
Daniel Scharff
Hello my dearest CPG ers. This episode is an absolute gold mine with my friend Aaron Fasano. One of the things that I love to do on this podcast is to highlight the kind of people that I've come across who I think can be game changers of brands. And I think that our listeners are really going to hear in this episode why Erin is that exact kind of person you should look out for. She has the big CPG skill set, but she isn't a lofty Pinterest mood boarder. She's honed her big time skills in the emerging brand world and is an action oriented marketer. She is in the trenches with the sales and operations teams and for that reason, she's really the best kind of person to explain to all of us what does a CMO actually do or what should they do?
01:16
Daniel Scharff
As well as giving great marketing tips for early brands. I hope you get as much out of this as I did. Enjoy welcome to the startup CPG podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Erin Fazano, my friend, a seasoned marketer with over 20 years of experience and a decade in CPG. So from her early days in marketing, rising through the ranks, including seven years in marketing at Dole Foods, at classic CPG, to starting her own brand and being CMO or chief marketing officer at Core Foods, she has been at the forefront of driving innovation and growth in the emerging CPG world. One of her greatest joys professionally, I know, is helping small brands flourish, particularly at retail giants like Whole Foods and Target.
01:59
Daniel Scharff
She is a SKU mentor and I'm also really proud to say that Erin for a long time was part of our startup CPG team. She was a managing editor, helping a lot of early brands get editorial coverage. Today I am so excited to delve into a legitimate question that I still have, which is what is a CMO? I've worked with some of the best marketers out there who are great, have awesome insight, judgment, instincts and impact on the business, but I still could never really tell you exactly what they do every day. So I am super excited to have Aaron here so erin can explain it all. Welcome, Aaron.
02:31
Erin Fasano
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
02:33
Daniel Scharff
All right, so let's get right into it. I love your career path. If somebody came to me and said, I want to be a CMO for a cool emerging brand, I would say, all right, here is the lab you can go to build your experience. To get it, you need to go to a great school, get good education, then go into probably a classic CPG house in marketing where you're going to get some of that awesome training and then get into the early brand world and figure out how to adapt your skills. Know, start crushing it there and then you can successfully then work your way up to becoming the CMO and be really impactful in your role. So it kind of seems like you did that. But can you just take us through the full journey, please? I'm dying to hear it.
03:12
Erin Fasano
Sure. Actually, I think it started when I was a kid. My 7th grade science fair project was a study of media, and I studied ads that ran during Oprah, the NFL, and Nickelodeon to prove that media targeting exists and of know won first place.
03:26
Daniel Scharff
Too bad. You could have been the next Google.
03:29
Erin Fasano
If only. But I got bit by the bun early, and I got into ad agencies right out of college and spent about the first seven years of my career doing that, working on all kinds of industries. Like I worked for McDonald's and Lexus and some hotel resorts in Las Vegas and really got to learn the tactics of marketing. I got great exposure to digital media when it was really emerging. I think were on Facebook with Mandalay Bay Resort and casino, like in 2012 or something. So it was really fun, like kind of learning and building as you go. But what I never really got was that closed loop on what's our marketing actually doing to the overall business. How are we really participating in the growth of the organization? And so that's why I went back and got my master's.
04:07
Erin Fasano
Actually got it in finance because I knew I couldn't read A-P-L or understand a cash flow statement. And so with that new fluency and the experience in marketing from my work life is when I went to Dole. So I was an entry level marketer there, an ABM, and I had probably the best mentor I could have had. He really took me under his wing stand. He taught me how to pull data out of IRi. He taught me how to run when it's time to do consumer testing. He taught me what a coupon was and what offer values work and what don't work and what's for trial driving and what's for basketbuilding. But he also taught me how to operate with the rest of the organization.
04:41
Erin Fasano
It was at Dole that I really learned you got to make best friends with sales, you got to make best friends with Ops, you got to make best friends with the R and D people. Because at the end of the day, the marketer is the voice of the consumer inside the organization. So my job was really to defend her and be her voice everywhere. So it was like a very valuable experience, learning basically all the tools in the toolbox and then leaving there and going to startups like brandable, sagely, naturals, core foods, where I am now taking all of those big company processes that matter.
05:13
Erin Fasano
When you have a billion dollars of sales and 300 staff members, bringing it down to sometimes teams of 1020, and allowing that nimbleness that you get from fewer people, but help you be successful and make better decisions faster, how do.
05:27
Daniel Scharff
You find somebody like that? Because that sounds like the best situation possible. You find somebody who probably is really engaged with the company, which you don't always find at those big cpgs. There are a lot of people checked out in my experience, who then also really identifies you as a talent, takes an interest in you. I mean, you get much more from that than you do, I think, from an MBA, which I also got. But I mean that on the job training for me would have been way more valuable. How did you get so lucky, and how is he so kind to really do that for you?
05:53
Erin Fasano
I think I just honestly got lucky. To your point, that was the team that was hiring at the time. Dole is actually a lot smaller than people realize. Our biggest marketing budget was actually the team I joined, but it was 25 million the year I joined, which is still kind of small for a brand you might think is very large. The marketing department had, I think, twelve people, so still kind of a small organization. So in some ways it was flat. By the time I left, I was the director of the frozen fruit business and I was having daily interaction with the division president who was responsible for all of North America because that was just like were running a little bit more entrepreneurially.
06:29
Erin Fasano
So even though it's a big brand with lots of revenue and we got to practice and learn, I think because the organization itself was still kind of small, I got sort of the best of both worlds.
06:39
Daniel Scharff
Awesome. Okay, so after Dole, when you then started getting into the kind of world of successively smaller companies, probably at first, before getting to core what are then some of the things that you were learning and working on while you were adapting your skill set to the world of emerging brands.
06:55
Erin Fasano
Oh, my gosh, so many things. I think I'd start by saying some of the emerging brands I joined didn't have a demand forecast, and then it made it very difficult to be sure how much inventory to produce, and then you'd kind of run into expiring inventory. So bringing in processes that felt very straightforward or very obvious, but that weren't really normalized, but also tried not to be very disruptive to the speed. So I think that was always the balance is how do you bring a little bit of process without disrupting how quickly the organization wants to move?
07:25
Erin Fasano
In some cases, it was, hey, we need to write down how much we think we're going to sell on some piece of paper somewhere so that our ops leaders know what to do and so the marketers know when we should be plusing up and down our investments. Or in some cases, it's like I go to a brand like sagely, and we really valued consumer insights there. That founder team was incredibly focused on who the consumer was. They knew her very well. Because I had done so much focus group work, like watching someone else lead it, I felt like, well, I could probably lead a focus group. So we figured out a way to do it really scrappy.
07:55
Erin Fasano
So that's the other thing is you kind of pick up all these skills from watching other pros do it, and then you can 80 20 rule it and kind of do it a little bit scrappier and still get really good insights.
08:06
Daniel Scharff
I love hearing you say that. I tell people all the time, that's exactly my experience. When I was at just egg, they had budget. I mean, they had raised an enormous amount of money. So I think when I got there, one of the first things I did was hire an expensive firm to run a conjoint because were interested in figuring out pricing. And, I don't know, it was 40, 50k, something like that. And then I looked at it and I was like, I could probably get at least 80% of the way there on Surveymonkey. And then through that, I figured out how to create a bare bones version of it that was incredibly effective. I learned how to do it from there. Just running my own studies, fielding my own panels through the surveymonkey platform.
08:44
Daniel Scharff
I learned so much and then was just constantly creating incredible sales slides with consumer insights because I could just churn this stuff out if we had a meeting coming up, like, hey, what are whole Foods consumers saying about our product right. Like, I could figure that out actually within a day with actual whole Foods customers. And it was super impactful. So I love hearing you say that. And I hope everybody out there listens to it also. Where, I mean, just be curious and try to figure things out when you're in this world of the early brands, because it is the wild west out there. And when you do take that interest, pursue something, and try to get great at it, you can be the person in this emerging brands world who knows how to do that the best. So I love it.
09:21
Daniel Scharff
Sorry I interrupted your flow, though. So let's keep going.
09:24
Erin Fasano
That's okay. I mean, to kind of build on that, also use the resources available to you. One great learning I took from the founding team at Sagely was they were leveraging their own email marketing list for insights. So they had their sagely insiders group. These were highly engaged consumers. We put them in their own Klavio list. And then I was just writing the monthly survey stuff. We wanted to know insights we felt like we needed. We knew we had a target meeting coming up. We'd ask them questions about their behaviors there. And just to your point, we turn them into great selling stories. Or we see brands like midday Squares doing this kind of thing all the time on their Instagram Stories. Like, tell us how much you want to see us at Costco.
09:58
Erin Fasano
I'm sure that's going into a selling story that they're bringing into that buyer meeting later. So there's ways to get really scrappy, especially as you look to support your sales organization.
10:08
Daniel Scharff
Awesome. All right, so how did this all come to play when you started your own brand, starry side, and where you had to do? Obviously a lot more than just marketing. And I think already talking to you now and also having had lots of incredible chats with you before, I'm always really impressed with how deep you can go into other functions as well, which I know you probably had to in that role.
10:29
Erin Fasano
Yeah. Starryside was really born out of a moment in my life where I was like, I feel like I really could do this. I was with someone who I value very much, Liz Sealy. I was her client at Dole. We are sort of brand friends, and we've done a lot of work together over the years, and were just sort of like spitballing one day over the phone, like dreaming up what could be. She's very imaginative, and we both are moms. And we had this sort of shared bond over wishing for more from the kids beverage space. And the more we got to talking about it, the more we felt like there really was an opportunity there. I sort of tell the story now. Michelle Obama entered it, so we must have been on to something.
11:03
Erin Fasano
But what we really learned from that experience, or what I really learned from that experience, is that choosing a partner who has the same, I think, end term vision as what you wanted, as what your goal is, really matters. Liz and I didn't really take enough time at the beginning to align on how we wanted to grow the business. So were a great team at building the brand. I really wanted to lead the ops and finance functions because I don't do that in my day to day life. So I found the poeman and worked with him to build the product out. She really led a lot of the branding efforts, which is her bread and butter, and it really felt like were going in the right direction.
11:36
Erin Fasano
But as you know, sometimes things didn't always go the way you want them to, but it was really great learning experience and I really value the opportunity to be the one dealing with the COVID because now in my day to day life, I know what my op fleet is going through. When she tells me she's trying to get something done or she's waiting for answer, I can so much more relate to it now than before.
11:54
Daniel Scharff
I love that. And again, for my time at just AG, I volunteered to be a product manager for about six months on the Just Mayo brand. And that was so enlightening to me of just figuring out all of the different competencies that exist on the team that are required to work well with a yeah, the challenges of hearing back from them and how to massage the relationship. And it gave me so much insight for then when I was the CEO of Machu Picchu, starting up and then just figuring out basically how to get that thing to market and how to be creative and really focus on the relationship with the Coleman and never just try to hammer them on things because whatever you're dealing with, you're going to have worse stuff to deal with them later.
12:33
Daniel Scharff
So you need to sort of save some of those cards for later. And ultimately, they do really want to help you. Things are going to go wrong. It's always going to happen. That's really awesome to hear. And then with your we all know, beverage is hard. I wish that there were better options out there for kids, especially, I think, because parents, I think, don't know what beverages to choose for their kids. And left to their own devices, they're probably just like, all right, have a monster which not just like toddlers, but like older kids, even, it would be great to have some better options for them. So going back, though, if you were starting over with starry side, if you had another crack at it, is there one or two things you really would have done differently?
13:14
Erin Fasano
There's one big thing I would have done differently, I really felt like. So the product we made was basically a flavored water in a can. The vision was an option that's better than a juice box, but still interesting to kids. We put it in a can because they all want soda, but mom doesn't want to give soda. So that was the idea. We fortified it with vitamins, and in retrospect, I think we could have built a stronger product platform, so it probably needed some level of functionality. Beyond vitamins, there are plenty of options for a mom to get vitamins into her child, and I just think we didn't push ourselves hard enough on the product offering itself. Of course, we did our research. We did our quant surveys. We put it in the mommy Facebook groups.
13:49
Erin Fasano
We got input that led us to where we ended up. But I think in retrospect, and knowing where the market ended up now, two years later, I think that we probably missed an opportunity to push a little bit harder there.
13:59
Daniel Scharff
But, yeah, I wonder if. Are there any tablets that are focused on kids drinks? I have really recently started drinking more tablets that add in electrolytes and vitamins, and it's so convenient. I don't have to lug a bunch of cans, and I don't feel as wasteful. Also, just dropping a little tablet into the water from home. I wonder. I'd be really interested to see somebody nail that one where it's still, like, fun and flavorful and kids enjoy it, but it feels like a treat. Kids are always asking for stuff, so hopefully it could be something that they would ask for.
14:30
Erin Fasano
Yeah. Imagine the partnership with the Stanley Tumbler of tomorrow. You can blow it out.
14:36
Daniel Scharff
I've never seen anybody so happy as at Christmas when I gave my niece a Stanley tumbler from the Taylor Swift tour. Like, somehow on eBay, I found one that was, like, from the actual tour and gave it to her. It was craziness. So I cemented my status as the funko the fun uncle with that one.
14:57
Erin Fasano
I'll be waiting for mine from you for Valentine's Day.
15:01
Daniel Scharff
All right, perfect. Okay, so getting back to it, then. So take me into then getting to core. Core, I think, was your first official CMO role, is that right?
15:10
Erin Fasano
That's correct, yeah. So when the core team hired me. I was actually brought on really to focus on innovation. Their formulator, who's an external r D food scientist genius, frankly. He also did my starwater and we worked together at Dole. So I knew him through sort know the grapevine of being around just like everybody knows everybody in our industry. So it was a great opportunity for me to kind of come in and get to do the kind of the fun stuff, product development. But really quickly, I mean, I'm talking like three months in, I realized, oh, no one's really that focused on trying to grow the d to c business. Oh, there's not really like a focus on Amazon. We don't really have an email, like a tight email program.
15:46
Erin Fasano
And so I kind of just more and more, as I saw there was not enough people startup, like there's not enough time in a day to do everything. I just kind of took on more and more in the marketing function and after a year they promoted me. And I think because I had just sort of demonstrated like, I'm going to do whatever it takes, I want to grow this business. And I think a lot of that was a strong partnership with sales as well. I learned pretty early on that sales and marketing are going to be like love, hate. And I really feel strongly like you can't hear the full voice of the consumer without hearing the retailer's voice too, because the retailer knows her guest. So I have to hear the retailer's guest as well as the consumer talking to me.
16:22
Erin Fasano
And you really do have to be able to listen to both. And sometimes there'll be a conflict and they won't always align perfectly, but there's always a way through that. So it was really fun actually having the opportunity to sort of be in the lead role. I'd been on the leadership team in my sort of initial role at core, but really taking the reins and building a marketing plan for this brand that had never really written down a marketing plan for a full year. Sort of a fleshed out way. We all work everywhere. So I had the whole company to my home and we presented it in my living room and it was like, again, like, hey, we're going to get scrappy.
16:52
Erin Fasano
But I think it matters that we all get together and really try to, like, I wanted to really build that sense of brand pride with the, you know, it's been a fun adventure and sort of trying to take the brand to that next level.
17:03
Daniel Scharff
So what is a full year marketing plan? I remember when I was at Machu Picchu, we knew we needed to do that. And were like, okay, what format is that? Is that a slide or kind of like a calendar, timeline type slide with a bunch of different lanes on it, or what is it and how did you know how to do it? And remembering a lot of the people listening right now are probably really early founders who would like to try to hack that on their own. So let's give them some tips.
17:28
Erin Fasano
Totally. Well, I'm a marketer, so I speak in slides. So my brain goes to the 90 page presentation. But it's my job to get that down to two slides that any salesperson can walk into a retailer meeting with. So I generally think about the two key pieces of information is, yes, marketing calendar. I plan on annual calendar. You plan on whatever calendar you want, but I always start there with all the tactics. And actually I really start with sales input first. So before I really do anything from any marketing layering, because the salespeople have to plan so far in advance, their plans for the next year are usually done by like June or July. So they kind of know what they're going to be doing.
18:05
Erin Fasano
So I like to lay those on a calendar first and see where are my big windows of where there's a lots of common promotion. Okay, everyone's running promos in January, everyone's in April, whatever it is. And then I sort of think about marketing in concentric circles, right? So then it's like, all right, we have our trade plan done. Then I'm thinking I'm going to set d to c aside for just a second and think more about retail. So then what shopper marketing programs can I implement that support these key strategic retailers, but that doesn't step on my trade programming. So some retailers, you're not going to want to also run a coupon program while you're on a discount. So maybe at Whole Foods, if I see that, hey, you know what? We're going to go six months without a promotion.
18:43
Erin Fasano
I'm going to run maybe a demo program here. I'm going to run maybe some kind of sampling program specific to whole food. So I sort of start filling in the blanks on my most important retailers and then I sort of take a side step to d to C. I like to make sure that the D to C programming kind of lines up with the trade programming. So again, if we're all doing new year new you, then we probably need a program for d to C that supports that and try to start layering in how the D to C and Amazon discounting and programs are all going to work because it sort of all works better when everyone's saying the same thing all the time, and that helps you build your organic comm strategy.
19:14
Erin Fasano
If everyone again, is all going to be on the same type of deal, then you can be talking about that in social your influencers or your affiliates can also be talking about that, and then you sort of build out from there and out from there. So sort of depending on the size of your business and how much you want to spend, I know one question I get all the time is how do I know how much money I'm supposed to spend on marketing? And it's not an easy question to answer because it really is different depending on the stage of the business, your objectives as it relates to profitability and growth. But the sort of, I would say, traditional rule of thumb.
19:44
Erin Fasano
If you're at a big CPG, which none of us are, but at a big CPG, they're going to say like a rule of thumb is 20%, but that's not for a startup. If 20% of your, let's say you're making maybe, let's say you're doing $200,000 in a year, that's not really going to be enough to buy you enough programming. So I'd say my suggestion to most small cpgs is identify the most strategic, important retail channels. Make sure you blow those out, whether it's a retailer or D to C or some combination of both, and then own the things that you don't have to pay for and do them excellently.
20:16
Erin Fasano
So have a strong plan for email, have a strong plan for your social content, and make sure that those things that you don't have to pay for are really working hard, including forming relationships with trade press. I know you've got a lot of great relationships there. You've done a great job bringing a lot of those people to the community and using your LinkedIn because those are going to be the ways that you start getting the buz and you just start building and then you can build enough revenue to justify more spend and it's sort of a cycle.
20:41
Daniel Scharff
Well, a couple of things that I want to comment on. The first is I bet because I knew you'll say yes to this, although I'm going to put you on the spot, do you have some kind of a template for a marketing plan that you would be willing to link in the show notes and share with the community?
20:54
Erin Fasano
Absolutely.
20:54
Daniel Scharff
Awesome. Okay. That'll be really helpful for people to see because it is visual what marketers do just visually, what does it look like? And then kind of work backwards to get the info to fill it in. So check the show notes for that. And then secondly, pretty interesting to hear you talk about starting from some of the activities, like sales activities. And I have a sales guy, so that makes me really happy. Like, all right, I've got Aaron on my team. She's going to support me with his retailers. One of the things that I just don't understand as well is how do you build a brand for the long term? Right? So someone might say, that's great. You're lining up your budget probably these days more important than ever to be really efficient with it and make sure that it's driving revenue.
21:32
Daniel Scharff
But where's the part of the budget, if any, that should go towards building a long term brand and that will live in people's hearts kind of outside of the specific sales driving activities.
21:44
Erin Fasano
Yeah. For some small brands, that's really going to come from, again, those owned places like your website, content, even your home page, can make you feel like you're a member of the brand. All of your email, marketing, comms, even if it's a promotion, it should still obviously be your brand voice, look like your brand. If you're a founder driven brand and your founder is like the face of the brand, hopefully they'd be doing a lot of thought leadership. So really it's about those things that you can afford to do, making sure that they're always building the brand. I think about a brand like a promise. This is something I learned from the brand strategist who I sort of admired in my time at RPA. His name is David Byrne and he always articulated the promise that you want the brand to deliver.
22:22
Erin Fasano
In some cases, and I think a lot of us, it's the product promise. We are always going to give you this healthy, nutritious thing. But if you can imagine what that higher order wishes like for starry side, obviously we wanted a better for you drink that was better than juice. But were actually really trying to inspire kids to be more creative. Because what we found through some research is that kids who are better hydrated tend to be more creative. They have some scientific evidence to back that up. So were really trying to build this tie on. Take a walk on the start. Like the sunny side is optimistic, but the starry side is the creative side.
22:55
Erin Fasano
And everything we did was about trying to push through this concept of kids and creativity and how we don't want to color inside the box, we don't want to stay inside the lines, we wanted everything to feel very creative and freeing. And so those are the places where you'll want to take inspiration to think beyond what's on the box and those product points of difference. But how you talk about your brand.
23:16
Daniel Scharff
So it's cool to hear. So the way you're talking about it, what I'm hearing is you would prioritize spending the budget on things that are really going to move the needle and speak to retailers and reach consumers where they need to be and drive sales at accounts. And the priority ones are the ones that matter the most. Like if you're in Whole Foods and target not getting it right there, you're going to have a whole world of problems. And then I also like that you mentioned almost like some of the b to b marketing, like LinkedIn, probably anybody who knows me, or if I'm connected with you on LinkedIn, you see me marketing to you probably on LinkedIn.
23:48
Daniel Scharff
And I'm always on there just with, I think my personal brand is that is who I am, which is very positive energy and I love supporting other people and then just sharing really exciting stuff that I'm working on and celebrating wins with the community. It was incredibly effective for me, running a beverage brand and even, I mean, our design team just working on assets for me that I would actually only really be sharing on LinkedIn because we didn't have a lot of followers at the time. And still it was just incredibly effective, like great graphics and researching the retailers and how to talk to them and spending a lot of time on those posts. I actually was finding a lot of retailers like, hey, yeah, no, I've seen you on LinkedIn. I saw that data slide that you posted on there.
24:34
Daniel Scharff
I guess I need to talk to you if you're such a hot brand. I mean, what a great way to start a conversation, right? Rather than just blind pitching someone who's never heard of you. So I found all of that marketing really helpful as well, even though it wasn't necessarily directly to consumers. Maybe some of the people bought our product, but just as a way to get on shelf, which then gets you a lot of impressions to consumers.
24:54
Erin Fasano
And then there's also, I'm just going to build on that. There's a whole basket of people who you're probably engaging with, like through your broker network or your merchandisers, your brand ambassadors. I see all the time in the startup CPG slack, people talking about engaging with them. If you can find ways to really inspire those people to understand your brand message quickly. I mean, those people become an army for you. They're at the shelf. I mean, it drives my husband crazy. I was actually commenting today on Lauren Oakley, the founder of one that I forgot the name of her brand, but it's Catalina Crunch. She said something how she find her husband went to a store and took a picture of a shelf set for her.
25:28
Erin Fasano
I'm constantly doing that, but also I'm talking to the people who are shopping the set like, so what are you looking for? Oh, why'd you pick that brand? I'm always trying to learn a little bit more from them. And then one thing I learned from my old school dole guys, when I would go walk the floor with them, they always had vip coupons. So they were not letting you leave our section of the store without making you take a dole product with them. And I know it seems small and it's obviously not scalable, but it's just those little interactions that help you feel like it's giving you the reps. Like talking about your brand all the time. You get to the point faster.
25:59
Erin Fasano
It's just a great little way, I think, to enable, if you're going to have people in the stores, you might as well have them working for you.
26:06
Daniel Scharff
I like hearing that. And basically you can be there at your booth at expo with all the passion in the world, which is great. But you know what's even better is just anybody from the community who knows the buyer before they come over saying, oh, that's a good product, it's a good brand. If someone does that, who they trust, oh, you're in a good place. So I really like thinking about it that then, you know, one question that I had know when I've started out before is like, hey, how much do we need to worry about Instagram followers? Because, oh my gosh, it is so much effort and expense to actually try to grow that channel.
26:40
Daniel Scharff
If you're trying to impress retailers with the presence or just trying to have an impact with content that you're creating, otherwise you're just like hitting golf balls out into the ether. Like very beautiful branded golf balls if nobody is there on the receiving end. Right? I don't know. Some people would consider their Instagram almost like a website, but then you also have to have your website and both of those things are very expensive. So how do you view the importance of social channels? I would say in the early days for a brand, I actually think it's.
27:10
Erin Fasano
Pretty important because I think it's going to be small. I think for starry side, we only got ourselves up to maybe 400 followers. But again, it kind of gives you those reps. You're learning what to say, you're honing your messaging. I was feeling a little bit shy for our brand to actually be on the other side of the camera. Maybe going back to what would I do differently, I should have been more willing to put myself out there to tell our story from my perspective, I think it would have been more impactful, it would have been more authentic. And I think that's my big learning from the midday team, is that authenticity works. But you also kind of have to do a lot of stuff to see what's going to work.
27:45
Erin Fasano
Well, I mean, this is going to sound silly, but I run my kids school's social media account and we've kind of learned over lots of reps. I mean, I'm putting out content every single day to promote their little school here in LA, and I'm like, okay, I feel like we've kind of got the hang of what this thing is and we're really starting to feel the traction growing in our little pocket of the world. You know, it is hard, but I also find that most CPG founders, I don't want to say all, but most, they started the brand out of a passion. Like, I'm allergic to gluten, so I need to make bread or I feel pain. So I'm going to leverage CBD into a product that will help me.
28:19
Erin Fasano
And so they tend to kind of already have that consumer insight built in because it's them, so they can be that voice. And I really do feel like it's a lot of work, but I think if you're able to make time for it because I think it will eventually pay dividends. But I wouldn't worry about vanity metrics, like how many followers you have. You have, how many you have? Have you been growing them? Have they been following that might be more useful information than just how many you have?
28:43
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I like it. And I just always felt like, oh, okay, just some picture of your product. Who's going to engage with that? I don't follow brands on Instagram. I don't care if they post a picture of their product, but like, okay, maybe you put someone interesting in that and they're talking about it. Maybe you see them trying the product and their reaction to it, or it's like liquid death style where it's very entertaining and creative. Really. I think you have to give people a reason, probably until you're at the size of poppy or something where you can just throw a can on there and everyone loves it so much at this point that they're just going to hit like and grow your brand. That's pretty interesting to hear about. So thank you.
29:20
Daniel Scharff
So let's say if you are just an early person starting out, what would you say? Hey, make sure you're at least doing this. If you're like a one two person team on the marketing front. And as you grow, when do you think they should be thinking about bringing on a dedicated marketer?
29:36
Erin Fasano
I always ask people to make sure they revisit their package when you start d to c and you've built this great, beautiful package that works really well for selling online. Just like double check that it's going to work on the shelf sometimes. For example, maybe you're in the frozen set and you're right behind a door and you don't have that physical barrier on a web page. Or maybe your packaging is a beautiful light yellow and it's just not going to pop with the contrasting white that you picked. So I always early on, ask people to make sure that before they get too far along as they move into brick and mortar to gut check the packaging that they have designed that's been working so well online, still works at retail.
30:11
Daniel Scharff
And if I can add on to that, I would say, find people who you trust and say, please don't just tell me that you like this. What do you actually think about it? If you give people that permission, they will tell you and me, just because I do meet a lot of brands, I'm trying to get better about saying like, hey, okay, yeah, I'll give you feedback. Do you want me to say that I like it or do you want to hear my opinion? And sometimes, honestly, I will crap all over it. I'm like, look, this is a sleeve and it's terrible. Like, this looks like you made it at home. It's awful. You need to run, not walk, and go back and get a better sleeve provider. And why does your UPC look all skewed?
30:43
Daniel Scharff
Like, it just looks like a really low quality drink and if I drink it's going to taste worse because it looks low quality. And I probably the person turns around and is pissed off at me for saying it, but a bunch of times they've come back and be like, that was actually like the first time somebody gave it to me that way. And now I see all of it and I wish I had been able to hear that from people, I think sooner and had sought it out instead of just focusing on this beautiful thing that were in love with that we had created and hadn't really gone out and gotten some tips from people that I think would have really helped.
31:14
Erin Fasano
Yeah, it's your biggest billboard is your package because it's on everything, it's on the shelf, it's everywhere. But then I would say the next most important thing is your email marketing program. Just as it relates to getting recurring revenue, making sure that you've got your flow set up correctly. If you don't offer subscription, find a way to offer them. I realize it's a little bit counterintuitive in my brain sometimes. Like am I really going to expect someone to subscribe to a nutrition bar? But you would be surprised how many consumers like the convenience of having. So you kind of get this nice little baseline of revenue that's sort of always coming in and supporting your other activities.
31:47
Erin Fasano
So making sure your email marketing program and that you have subscriptions and appropriate bundles kind of all set up on your website, I think kind of gives you a little bit of that freedom because you know that you're going to have this stability because once you get to retail, as you know, you're going to get a big order one day and then you're going to famine and then it's peace and then it's famine and then you're going to run a prolo and then the distributor is going to load in and then you're going to be like waiting for orders forever. So it is sort of nice to have that stability. But again, always keeping in your brand tone, in your brand voice. And like I always say, the things that you own, make sure that they're excellent and perfect.
32:20
Erin Fasano
Your social, your web, whatever you're pushing out to the press when you're trying to do outreach, we all try to do press, obviously with the trade press. But then beyond that and anything you're having your founder go out and say, really make sure you're saying the same thing over and over.
32:33
Daniel Scharff
And one thing you mentioned early on is that you had a lot of experience running focus groups and then kind of learned how to do that scrappily yourself. What would you recommend for early founders as they're getting their product out there? Maybe it's in the prototype type stage or just early versions of the product. Like tactically, how can they do that? How should they set it up? What kind of questions should they be asking and what can they learn?
32:53
Erin Fasano
Yeah, the first thing that's really important for running a focus group, just like side note, little tip, is to tell them that you aren't going to get fired if they don't like your idea. Because I found that sometimes people get nervous, like they think, oh, no, I'm going to cost this lady her job. So I'm always very open, like, I do work for the company, but these aren't my ideas. I'm just here to help get the feedback. So that always kind of helps. But where I find people, typically I find them as they're already our shoppers. But if you're, before having any shoppers, you can use your friend. I also kind of recommend using a friend of a friend. So maybe you're looking for moms. You don't want to ask your best friend.
33:26
Erin Fasano
She's going to have a harder time, to your point, telling you things you don't want to hear. But maybe she can recommend a friend or two. And then in the case of the example I gave for Sagely, I had them join a Google Meet. And then I used a whiteboard function in Google and had them. I wrote a product concept. There's sort of a standard format. I'm also happy to share an example of that after show where you kind of outline the consumer problem. I'm hungry in the middle of the day. The brand solution, core nutrition bars will keep you full because we have a lot of fiber. And then like a blurb about what the offering is, the reasons to believe, the price, where you find it, et cetera. There's like a standard little format.
34:00
Erin Fasano
And I have these people just mark it up, like circle the things you like you don't like. And for Sanjay, it was really important because were really trying to find our next function to address. So we addressed sleep, we addressed pain, and we addressed anxiety. And so were looking for what's the next line of products. So the concepts were very different. Some were daily wellness. We had some sexual health ideas. And so it really helped us prioritize them. So after I had the consumers kind of mark them up, I had them rank them, and then it was kind of like they had sort of an open discussion with each other, even like debating. And it was really interesting to hear how they talked to each other about the product as well.
34:37
Erin Fasano
So I always say you got to take consumer input with a grain of salt, particularly when it's around pricing, everyone's always going to tell you they want it cheaper. So just know that as long as you're competitive with the other brands and the category on the shelf that you're playing with, whether it's virtual shelf or a real shelf. That's where you're going to want to be. So don't be discouraged if they want it cheaper because they always say that. But yeah, there are certainly ways to try to find people who are willing to mark up a piece the paper. You could do the same thing with a package design. Circle the thing you like the most. Circle the thing that makes you want to try it. Cross out the thing that looks the worst to you.
35:07
Erin Fasano
Like things like that consumers like to write on the paper. It makes it easier for them than having to tell you what they like and don't like.
35:12
Daniel Scharff
It's really interesting to hear you talk about it that way. And it makes me think, like, one thing I don't believe in is innovation by committee. Like, just getting so many different perspectives out there. You will get lost. Right. But also still needing to be open to hear things that are different from the vision that your team already has. So it definitely seems like a balance. But I think there are also different things you can do. Like, once you've spent all the time doing this, just show it to somebody for 1 second and see what they think it is. Right. Like out of context. Or then maybe show it to somebody on a shelf. And then you'll just hear things you've never expected. Like, what is this even. Is this like a cookie? And you're like, no, it's a cracker. Okay.
35:50
Daniel Scharff
And you might learn something really important from that. I think when you're a bigger brand, you get away with it more because people understand what it is already. But early days, I really believe simpler is better. And really not trying to nascar your product out there and put every little thing that you love about it, which is really hard because you've spent time building it so thoughtfully and choosing every single ingredient that's better for people. But at the end of the day. Yeah. What are really the top? Maybe not even three. The top one or two reasons why someone would pick this up. Okay. Make that obvious to them. And let's just go after that, at least in the early days. And probably also leads you to have to fix less things on your packaging later on, as we all always do have to.
36:32
Daniel Scharff
Everybody just know that you are going to have to change your packaging frequently as you fix. Yes. So after you do that work, and then you need to go and socialize results with your team, what's it been like for you? Sometimes you have a tough time convincing people that things need to change. Maybe you have a CEO or who's a founder who actually created the packaging and you're telling them like, we really need to change this thing. What's that been like for you? What kind of tools and tricks have you used to use your influence subtly but effectively?
37:00
Erin Fasano
Yeah. When I have to deliver bad news, it kind of depends on how bad the news is and exactly what we're communicating. But a lot of times I'll kind of look to the other members of leadership team and try to at least find one alignment or consult with another member of the leadership team so that perhaps when we're having the conversation, that other person is able to support my position or chime in a productive way. When I'm receiving feedback from the CEO or founder, maybe on something he's unhappy with, for example, I really do my best to let them talk. What I find often is if I can just not say anything and not because I want to be silent, but I really want to hear what the actual issue is.
37:37
Erin Fasano
Are we frustrated that revenue is down and this mistake that I made maybe exasperated some PNL related issue. Are we feeling like we're not all saying the same thing on the brand? And I really try to give them the space to express whatever it is the challenge. And then I really do try to take a beat. Thanks for that feedback. Let's get back on the phone tomorrow. Like, let me ponder when I'm bringing bad feedback forward or a challenge forward. I really don't do that until I have a plan, unless it's really bad news. Let's say we find out we don't get accepted into some customer line review that mattered to us. It's like, okay, so get together with the sales leader. A first. We're going to follow up with the buyer. This is what we said to the buyer.
38:17
Erin Fasano
This is what we're asking the buyer. Like, we're trying to understand why there was a no. If we can find that out, then it's, hey, we didn't get into, let's just say Whole Foods, for example. We reached out to the buyer and the buyer's feedback was X and Y. Sometimes it's very helpful to have that retailer feedback when you have to deliver, particularly packaging or product news. They just didn't really feel like it was innovative. Like, protein is a great measure, but right now everybody in this category is using adaptogens or whatever it is. Sometimes you can leverage outsiders to help carry some of that weight. And then again, you kind of built up those few people to help you deliver news. That's difficult, but it's never easy. And it does sort of take a little bit of finesse.
38:55
Daniel Scharff
I think those are really good pieces of advice. And I imagine that you do this already, which is like, when you are presenting the stuff they don't necessarily want to hear, making sure that there's data there, right? Not just like, well, wait, is it because you think that. No, here's the data that we're getting from people with the feedback. So, okay, you can choose not to believe it, but this is database. And then that's music to my ears. You talking about, like, I come with a plan to actually address it, not just like, hey, people don't like this. What are we going to do? No, I'm a boss. I'm coming here, I've got this. We need to change this. Here's how we can do it.
39:28
Daniel Scharff
And we can add this to the packaging next time around, and it's going to look fine, and it's going to be this kind of font, and it actually could help us this way. That's a dream for anybody to have somebody like that on their team. And again, I really just have to mention, I'm so impressed. Know you're a marketer, but you're really focused on the sales wins. And I know we did a Kroger presentation together where we shared with the community a few episodes back about all the options that you can pick on Kroger. And I was really blown away how much you actually understand, not just about the marketing options, but about the go to market options with Kroger and the kind of distribution things you need to consider and so much about their chain.
40:06
Daniel Scharff
I have to say, I think that's really uncommon for a marketer to actually understand that much. And I think probably makes you extremely effective at the job. So just. Good for you on that.
40:16
Erin Fasano
Thanks, Daniel.
40:20
Daniel Scharff
Okay, next question. Let's say you're starting a brand, and number one objective for you now is I need to drive velocity at retail. What are you going to do? Tell me the top ways to do it, because honestly, isn't that what it's for a lot of us, given how expensive d to c is right now, isn't that the name of the game? And what's the secret? Give us the number one secret sauce.
40:40
Erin Fasano
The number one secret sauce is do what the retailer offers. So most of the retailers offer programs. Kroger is a great example of one. But they know their guest, and so leverage what they already know. And the programs that they build that you can buy from them are going to be effective ways to drive velocity. They're also in many cases, going to help the retailers bottom line. And in some cases, the buyers are actually measured on, you know, they have a measure called vendor income, for example, at Target. And the buyers have to bring in a certain amount of vendor income from buying programs like demos or buying their critio paid search programming. So you're kind of doing a double service, right? You're keeping your buyer happy because you're keeping her vendor income bucket full.
41:21
Erin Fasano
And you also know that these are tried and true tools that other brands are using and that you can really see your velocities change when you start to get more national distribution. You can add in other types of programming. There's lots of trial driving options. I really like to execute brand partnerships. At Kroger, we did a really fun one with mush. We were brand friends and neighbors. We sat next to each other on the shelf, but we targeted different people. And because Kroger's data is so robust about households, we could really see the cross penetration. And we did a whole combined coupon social d to, like, big program together that our buyer happened to stumble upon, which was so great. So I think there's a whole bunch of different ways.
42:00
Erin Fasano
Again, once you get a little bit more than just the regional retailers, where you're going to have to really be limited to what you can do in your regional market. And that's another sort of little piece of advice. If you can, if you can grow in one regional area and kind of like win in your backyard. That's how Clara puts it from Unite food. She really wants to win in the LA area. Win in our backyard. And you can then do a little bit more if you're concentrated enough in your distribution. Actually ran a test for core in the LA area. We were in both Ralph's and Vaughn. I felt know that covers almost the entire bear market. Plus were a sponsor of mammoth and Big Bear. And so it was during January of last year.
42:35
Erin Fasano
And so I built a whole 360 program that really ran from the top to the bottom of the funnel. So at the top of the funnel, I have out of home billboards, like, good things happen in the cold, which, of course, core is a refrigerated bar. And that was kind of my tie back to the retailer. I got Ralph and von's approval to use their logos on our out of home boards. Then when you went into the store, you could see my piece of pop hanging right by the shelf with those more detailed reasons to know the fiber and the protein and all the things that you care about. At the point of decision in the app on both of the retailers offering a coupon at the same time.
43:07
Erin Fasano
So it's really like trying to build a case for when you have this concentrated geography, you can maybe place some bigger bets. I built a whole brand tracking system that I wrote a brand tracker all by myself and did it before and after so I could demonstrate how awareness change from point before and after. And of course, use spins data to augment the story that were telling. So there's certainly ways that you can find a way to kind of keep your penetration in certain geographies tight. You can also do a lot more and replicate what you might want to do on a national level, but at a more regional level.
43:37
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. All right, I guess, yeah. One question I wanted to come back to. Let's say you are launching that new brand. How are you going to think about spending, by the way, on all the different channels that you have right now? How much would you be putting into d to c right now? Obviously, depending on what kind of a product it was versus retail versus just some general market, like branding stuff.
43:57
Erin Fasano
Yeah. So then d to c kind of depends on whether or not you're doing a beverage. Let's be honest, they're real heavy. And so it kind of creates some p l related challenges. Depends also on how much you care about profitability and whether or not you have retail distribution. So I tend to prioritize retailers, I think, because I know how hard it is to move velocity. So if I had $1 and I had whole foods and d to c, I'd spend it at Whole Foods all day long, because I know that I'm kind of in control of my own destiny on d to C. So when I get my next cash injection, I can revisit growing that I don't really have that same opportunity.
44:27
Erin Fasano
At Whole Foods, you kind of get one, and then if you don't win or you aren't able to maintain your shelf space, you may not be able to come back to them. And so right or wrong or indifferent, that's how my brain thinks about it. Because once you get that retailer shelf, you really do want to hold onto it so you can grow from it, build from it, learn from it, and it really is. I think I saw just yesterday, I think it was McKinsey. They put out like a 2023 look back or. No, it was a look forward on 2024 health and wellness, just like a consumer study. And the number one place people learn about brands is the shelf. And I think we all think it's friends and family, but it's the shelf.
45:00
Erin Fasano
And I was like, oh, I love seeing that because it really is.
45:03
Daniel Scharff
I saw that study. It was fascinating for me because, yeah, I figured with retail, just getting on shelf gets you tons of impressions when you're there. They say consumers need to see you, I don't know, seven times or whatever before they'll purchase you for the first time. Yeah, getting on shelf actually does a lot, especially if it's a good shelf and you look good there and it's a cool store and people see you in that context, at some point probably they're going to think maybe they should check it out, right?
45:28
Daniel Scharff
And for me anyways, it felt more efficient to do that than trying to do it in the unlimited universe of d to C, at least especially for beverage where it's so heavy to ship and the price points are lower and getting people to try stuff when it's a twelve pack is kind of hard. So one question I have for you is how are you thinking about d to C, like your own website versus stuff like Amazon?
45:49
Erin Fasano
Yeah, well, I kind of want to start by just saying something a little controversial. Marketing is a little bit of an art and I think sometimes with the focus, with the amount of data you can extract, like the roas and the CAC, and how efficient can we get and how much can we extract for the one penny we want to spend and how many dollars can we get? I think sometimes we lose a little bit of the forest through the trees. And I love to just try to remind people. Sometimes doing branding really does help.
46:15
Erin Fasano
I mean, if you have the luxury of being able to execute an event that, I don't know, maybe in partnership with Airwan and then you can get some good social content out of it and maybe, I don't know, it's $10,000 spend and that sounds like a lot, but you can really find a way to maximize that one day event and make it feel bigger than it is. You're not going to be able to measure that roas, but you're going to see it in velocity at your shelf.
46:37
Erin Fasano
And so I always just try to, like, before I get into a whole thing about D, to always, I feel like I struggle with how to place those bets between those two things because it is a little bit more predictable, especially when you have a lot of data to work from as you try to build your d to c business. But in any event, in terms of how I think about my own brand versus Amazon, it's kind of a hard question to answer because in both of the cases, in both of the brands that I worked at, sagely was CBD brand. So we had to build a whole separate line, excuse me, of products that were acceptable for Amazon. And were really focused on d to C because of that. Core is a refrigerated nutrition bar.
47:09
Erin Fasano
So we are by nature not FBA, which makes it very difficult to compete in a very crowded protein bar space. So I'd say in both cases, I just, by nature of the way the business is operated, prioritize d to c. But I also think strategically, there are reasons why that makes sense. You obviously own the consumer. You can talk to her again, you can retarget her. You can move her up to other products. It's easier to introduce new things. But of course, Amazon does often bring scale, particularly if you can find a niche where there is maybe less competition. Protein bars is not a space where there is less competition. So I think it sort of depends a little bit on your product and your price point and what else is available on Amazon.
47:43
Daniel Scharff
It's funny when people say things like, oh, that's a competitive category. I always say, well, every category is competitive. If you think there's one that isn't like, let's do a business together, let's go. But I would still also say, like, okay, what are the most competitive ones? I would say, yeah, protein bars, granola, maybe just because these are things that people make at home, and then they're like, well, I should launch this business. And they do. And there isn't a huge tech barrier to launching something like that. So then, yeah, you do see a lot of competition in the market, but that's great to hear. So, Aaron, there are so many other questions I would love to ask you, but we are coming up to the end here. So I am going to cut us off.
48:21
Daniel Scharff
But I would really love to ask you because anybody listening to the last hour knows you just dropped a ton of info and we're just scratching the surface. Is there anything that you can leave people with for any ways that people can follow you or connect with you or things that you're interested in? Just ways for people to just generally get more Aaron Fizzano in their lives?
48:40
Erin Fasano
Oh, my gosh, I'd love more in Fazano, in everyone's lives. You can obviously find me on start at CPG Slack. I really make an effort to be there and answer questions that I know the answers to. Try not to weigh in when I don't know you can find me on LinkedIn and I love trying to help founders of brands who really are trying to change the world for whatever their niche is and just do the best I can to like, hey, yeah, I have the whole Foods reset schedule. Here you go. Or you need help writing a marketing plan to launch you into. Sure. Like, let's have a conversation. So I'm here as a resource for anyone who has questions, who wants help, who wants to hang out and have a great time at expo.
49:17
Erin Fasano
I'll be with you guys for a little while in your booth. Yeah.
49:20
Daniel Scharff
All right, Aaron, by the way, are you able to work with other brands? I feel like everybody listening to this is going to clamor to reach out to you. Is that something that you have space for?
49:30
Erin Fasano
Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot of brands that I love to help in my free time, so I'd love to help anyone who needs a consultant for a quick conversation or a longer project. I'm here to talk about that.
49:39
Daniel Scharff
Great. And the best way then is to hit you on LinkedIn or do you want to drop your email or anything?
49:44
Erin Fasano
Yeah, my email is my name, Erin, with the letter M, like maryfassano@gmail.com.
49:49
Daniel Scharff
All right, great. Aaron, thank you so much for sharing this wealth of experience and insights with us. Thank you again for all of the help that you've given to the startup CPG team and the community at large, especially answering a lot of those really difficult to answer questions in the marketing channel, which we super appreciate. So thank you again for just joining us on this podcast. I think it would be really hard to measure how much impact this is going to have for all the people that are going to hear this. And please again, check the show notes for some of the cool resources that we got Aaron to commit to sharing with us on this podcast. So, Aaron, my friend, thank you again very much. And I can't wait to see you at Expo.
50:28
Erin Fasano
Thank you, Daniel.
50:29
Daniel Scharff
All right, bye, everyone. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Sharf. I'm the host and founder of startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnerships@startupcpg.com and reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website, startupcpg.com, to learn about our webinars events and Slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band. It's the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support.
51:16
Daniel Scharff
See you next time.